_Author of_
The Ward Hill Series
The Blue and Buff Series
The Winner Series
Etc.
The
GOLDSMITH
Publishing Company
Cleveland, Ohio
Made in U.S.A.
Copyright 1897 by
A. J. ROWLAND
Published
1928 by
The Goldsmith Publishing Co.
*PREFACE*
A school has been very correctly termed a little world of itself.
Within it the temptations and struggles and triumphs are as real as
those in the larger world outside. They differ in form, not in
character, and become for many a man the foundation upon which later
success or failure has been built.
It is perhaps wise for me to explain that the boys whose lives in the
Weston school have been outlined in this book are "real" boys, and that
every fact recorded actually occurred much as it has been described. If
the results of the struggles and successes shall prove to be a stimulus
to other boys who may be facing similar problems, and if the failures
shall serve the purpose of a warning word and teach the younger readers
what things are to be avoided and how they are to be overcome, the
author will certainly feel well repaid for his labor.
Unfolding life is ever a marvelous sight, and the interest with which we
follow those who are trending now the paths once familiar to us never
fails those still young in heart while old in years.
The recently developed interest in the work and lives of the younger
people, is one of the marvels of this closing century. Greater than any
of the discoveries of science, nobler than any of the great movements of
the times is that renewed interest in the possibilities of the young
life all about us, undeveloped it is true, but filled with the promise
of power.
So many times our eyes are opened when it is too late to behold the
vision. We may preach, and warn, and urge, and exhort, and scold, but
nothing will take the place of actual experience. It is natural for
each young heart to wish to learn and test life for itself.
However, I am not without hope, that the friendship and sympathy for
Ward Hill and his friends may not be entirely without their unspoken
lessons, and that before my readers there may arise for each one the
vision of the man who is yet to be.
When all our platitudes are ignored or forgotten it is still true that
youth is the seed-sowing time, and what a man sows, as well as the
measure of his sowing, determines the character and the abundance of the
harvest he will reap. We do well, then, to strive at least to scatter
the seed at the time when the seed can be sown. The soils may vary, the
seed is the same.
I trust that the interest, the pride, the sorrow, and pleasure which the
writer has felt, as he has followed the courses of these boys, may in a
degree, at least, be shared by his readers, and also may not be entirely
without their effects in inspiring a desire to profit by their examples.
Elizabeth, N. J.